


all of the little bones (just don't let go)

by iskra (kiira)



Series: this is not the end of me (this is the beginning) [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Part 2, immortal laura au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3253994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiira/pseuds/iskra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it seems that the heavy reality of eternity is easier to talk about when you can’t see carmilla’s face, when it’s dark and she’s curled into your side, soft breath on your neck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all of the little bones (just don't let go)

**Author's Note:**

> read part one of this series first or this probably won't make sense

_“it was always the same dream: my dad would always come to see me in my childhood room and i would have to tell him that he was dead and he would look very sad and disappointed that he had died._

_then he would go away.”_

_\- marie mutsuki mockett_

////

You don’t tell your father for three months, two weeks and eleven days. Every time you pick up your phone and dial his number, the words simply _stick_ and you hang up with trembling fingers, cutting his _Hello?_ off mid-sound.

Carmilla doesn’t mention it, not after that first strange night, but he feels like a hollow empty gap.

Ever since you were nine, your father has known everything about you and now? Now you are nearly a stranger.

/

When you were sixteen, you had your first girlfriend. Her name was Katharine, and she was lovely, a precious secret.

(You weren’t _out_ yet, and you hated the idea that you had to have a whole conversation with people to inform them of exactly what gender you liked to kiss over and over and over, but the simple truth was you hadn’t told your dad. At least not yet.)

It wasn’t that you didn’t think he wouldn’t _approve_ or something. You just didn’t know how to get the words to come out, didn’t know what words you wanted to use yet.

As it turned out, he saw you kissing Katharine good night one evening when she dropped you off after a date, and quickly made sure that you understood “No sex, Laura Irene Hollis” and almost as quickly, “If you are having sex, make sure it’s safe,” and then, “I wish your mother was here to talk to you about this.”

You ended up crying that night, because sometimes you really wish your mother was there to talk to you too.

/

“Carm,” you whisper one night, “Carm, are you awake?”

She rolls over and presses her face into your shoulder.

“I’m still fucking nocturnal, cutie, despite the show I’ve been putting on for the last month or so. So, yes. I’m awake.”

You laugh softly, tangling your fingers into her hair, combing it over her shoulders, putting it in small braids, trying to let the words come out.

“Laur, as much as I appreciate this, did you have something you wanted to say?”

“Yeah… totally. Can you drive?”

She sits up slightly, shaking your fingers from her hair and looks at you with something gentle in her eyes.

“Yeah, sweetheart, I can drive. It’s hard to be around as long as I have and not pick up on that,” and she’s teasing you, but her voice is soft, and when she leans down to kiss you, her lips are warm, rose, safe.

/

You Skype with your dad for an hour most Wednesday evenings, and since you Changed you feel like the hour stretches on forever. It’s hard to keep sharing about your homework you got last week in Irish Lit, the 92 you got on your Chem lab, what exactly Perry and LaF are up to when you can feel ichor racing through your veins, can feel your fingers buzzing with the greatness of divinity.

“Do you have something you want to tell me, pumpkin? You look kind of jumpy,” he says one evening, and you consider telling him, letting your forever dance over miles of dead air in a second, consider watching his face freeze and fall on your grainy computer screen, but the door slams and Carmilla slouches in, wrinkling your nose at you and throwing herself onto her bed.

“And who’s this?” You dad smiles at you, raising his eyebrows and yeah: you do have something you want to tell him.

“Carm?”

She looks at you over the edge of her book, tilting her head to the side a bit, “Mhm?”

“Carm, come here for a sec.”

Your dad is giving you a _look_ and you’re almost 100% sure you’re blushing, because Carmilla’s smiling in that “my girlfriend’s a dork” way, but she sticks a bookmark in her book and comes over to your desk, shoving you over with her hip and basically sitting in your lap.

Your dad’s look intensifies.

“Hi Mr. Hollis!” She grins (something you have almost _never_ seen her do) and wiggles her fingers at the camera.

“Dad…” You take a deep breath and rest your chin on Carmilla’s shoulder, “This is Carmilla. My um… girlfriend?”

“Hello, Carmilla,” and she waves again. You can tell she’s trying her hardest not to laugh. “My daughter doesn’t sound too sure. Are you definitely dating her, or is this news to you too?”

And then she does laugh.

“Yes, sir. I mean…” She presses a soft kiss to your cheek, “I’m definitely dating your daughter.”

He nods once sharply, and Carmilla bites her lip to keep from laughing.

“Now, Ms.…”

“Karnstein,” she supplies quickly.

“Ms. Karnstein, I don’t need to tell you that if you break my daughter’s heart, I will be in Austria faster than you can blink, correct?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Also understood that my daughter can probably kick your ass? She’s passed all her Krav Maga levels.”

You squeeze her hand under the desk as she nods again.

“Good. And Laura, darling? Please make sure you’re having safe sex. See you soon.”

He ends the call and Carmilla almost starts crying she’s laughing so hard.

/

It seems that the heavy reality of eternity is easier to talk about when you can’t see Carmilla’s face, when it’s dark and she’s curled into your side, soft breath on your neck.

“You know how I asked if you could drive?”

She shifts slightly, tracing circles into your skin, quiet.

“Yeah, love,” kisses your jaw, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. “I remember.”

“If… if…um after midterms, could we drive to England? I think I have something I need to tell my dad.”

“Sure, babe, but you know, my vampire skills can only get a car across the English channel for so long. Maybe you could summon gods again?”

And you half feel tears build up in the back of your throat ( _it’s a joke, Laura, it’s a joke_ ) so you just elbow her lightly, and whisper, “You know what I mean, you goof.”

She can hear the break in your voice, and looks at you carefully, pushing herself on top of you so she can look right into your eyes. It’s a little eerie, and you want to look away, want to look anywhere but at Carmilla’s eternity.

“You okay, cutie?”

You nod once, and she looks like she’s about to say something, so you crane your neck up and kiss her. She kisses back for a second, but pulls away.

“Laura, I’m not going to kiss you to end a conversation. I know I’m… I’m not the best with these heart to hearts sometimes, but you know you can talk to me, right?” And she looks so sad and serious, so _worried,_ you want to hold her forever (you could; you could hold her forever).

You shake your head, “It’s nothing, Carm,” and when she raises one eyebrow at you, you roll your eyes. “I promise. Cross my heart, it’s nothing. I just… don’t know how I’m going to… going to tell my dad and….” and the aching lump in your throat cuts off your words.

“Could you just kiss me?” you whisper, and she still looks like she’s holding something fragile, precious, but leans down and kisses you gently, once, then curls up with her head on your chest.

“I love you,” you whisper to the top of her head, twisting her curls around your fingers.

“Me too,” she mumbles, and for all her talk of being nocturnal, she’s asleep within five minutes.

/

Some days it’s easy to forget, easy to forget that in a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years you will be the exact same girl. Those are the days when you go out to the movies with LaF, or on a pie date with Danny (“They’re not _dates,_ ” Carmilla frowns, and Danny makes sure to refer to them as dates as much as possible in front of her), or to a rugby game with Kirsch, or out to dinner with Carmilla. The days where you’re doing normal college things, staying up until 2am trying to finish papers and making out with your girlfriend at frat parties.

But then it’s the morning after pulling an all-nighter and you feel perfectly fine, it’s your god knows what number beer at the Zetas’ Winter Bash and you’re barely tipsy, it’s the way the Summer Society girls always seem to know where you are (the way one girl fell to her knees and started mumbling in something you think was Sanskrit before Danny rushed you away) that make the glowing, shivering holiness under your skin feel so much heavier, so much more than your twenty-two years.

(It’s the way Carmilla looks at you and you feel love swelling up in your lungs, pressing out your fingertips, tangling in your throat and tongue and lips.)

“Harker? Earth to Harker?”

LaFontaine is snapping their fingers in front of your eyes, “Jesus Christ, Laura, I’ve been trying to get your attention for like, at least twenty seconds now.”

You roll your eyes at them.

“Your life is so difficult, LaF. Also? Mina Harker? Really?”

They turn away from you and start to try to get the DVD to go into their laptop. They’re the only one who will indulge your Disney obsession without too many comments; you tried once with Carmilla but her analysis of _Bambi_ was something you were only willing to sit through once. (Something about the socio-political implications of the romantic undertones in the relationship between Flower and Bambi and you _really don’t care_ ).

“Laura?” They aren’t looking at you; they’re very carefully staring out the window at the street below, “You’re going to be twenty-two forever?”

And it’s the way they say twenty-two, the way their voice cracks that makes you freeze, makes you cross their kitchen (and they’re _crying_ ).

You can’t feel your hands, your stomach is something ice and you reach out one trembling hand to touch LaFontaine’s shoulder, and “Yeah.”

They shake their head, and look at you with something like hopelessness, something like regret. “We were just growing up, Laur. You were gonna go be some big journalist, _do_ something. You’re never going to grow up now,” and they’re squeezing your hand so tightly you can’t feel your fingers anymore (ichor struggling to feed your hungry cells).

“LaF…” you whisper, but they’re not done.

“You can’t do any of that now, you _can’t._ You’ll get a job and then have to move on, cause they’ll notice that you’re not aging, that ten years from now you’ll still look like a senior in university,” they swallow hard and stare at you, eyes glassy.

“You’re never gonna grow up, Laura.”

You pry your hand from their iron grip and sit on their couch, rest your head against your hands. Wait.

They stand by the window.

You sit on the couch.

They glance over at you, and with a shaky sigh, sit down.

“LaF. I wanted to, I _want_ to,” and you smooth your hands down your skirt, “And believe me, I thought of that. Like a hundred thousand times, I thought of that. And Carmilla reminded me, and Danny told me and I knew it. But _god_ LaF, I want to. I needed too,” and you let your head fall onto their shoulder, “Besides, Carm and I will be like the coolest aunts for Perry and your kids.”

LaF laughs and presses and quick kiss to the top of your head, “I’m just worried for you. For Carmilla. She seems so… sad, and I never want you to be like that.”

You reach over to where their laptop is resting on the coffee table and press play, the familiar music starting to play.

“Don’t worry,” you say over the opening bars of _Beauty and the Beast_ , “please.”

/

Carmilla’s last midterm is after yours, some ridiculously advanced logic class – she decided to get a graduate degree in a specific field of mathematics that you constantly forget the name of at Silas while waiting for you to finish your undergrad (“You truly think I’d _leave_ Laura?” and you never brought it up again), and as soon as she breezes into your room, she drops a kiss to your bare shoulder and pulls out her dark green rucksack.

(She _technically_ lives on an apartment off-campus, but spends so much time in your university required on-campus dorm that most of her stuff found its way into your annoyingly small single).

“Um… Carm? What are you doing?”

She raises an eyebrow at you, throws a couple more random books into her bag and then her leather jacket.

“Thought we were going on a road trip to England, cutie.”

Your breath catches in your throat; your heart stammers and all you can see is your father (LaF saying _You’re never gonna grow up_ ; Carmilla’s eternity).

She slows her random packing, “Sweetheart, you’re going to have to tell him eventually,” and she’s _right,_ of course she’s right.

It’s just – and she bites her lip and takes a long breath, “You don’t… you don’t want to change back, do you?” She whispers.

(She’s asked you this before; usually at night, usually when you’re crying with the weight of forever resting on your shoulders.)

“No,” you say, “No, god no.”

Everytime you say it, her eyes brighten (she never looks quite sure that you have chosen her.)

That night, she presses you into the mattress and gasps _Laura, Laura, Laura_ into your neck, your stomach, your hips; _I love you_ onto your lips as she presses her fingers into you. And _god_ you have never loved as you love now.

/

It takes another two days before you can pack up your suitcase (three shirts, two pairs of paints, a couple pairs of underwear and all your coursework). Carmilla’s bag, you think, contains a shit ton of books, none of which have _anything_ to do with her classes, a worryingly sharp knife, and a cooler of blood.

“Ichor just doesn’t do it for me, babe,” and flashes her fangs at you.

You roll your eyes at her (later that afternoon, you realize it’s the first time someone mentioned the Change and your throat didn’t fill with the panic of the endless unknown).

As it turns out, when Carmilla said she could drive, it didn’t mean she had a _car_ , which is how you find yourself _stealing_ a car in broad daylight. Carmilla’s laughing, doing something to the car door while you’re “standing guard, cupcake,” and “don’t worry, if anyone comes, I’ll eat them,” which quite unsurprisingly, was a lot less reassuring than Carmilla intended.

Finally, after what was quite possibly the longest three minutes and thirteen seconds of your life, Carmilla’s got the door open.

“Idiots, leaving their keys in the car,” and starts the engine.

You stand outside the car and chew on your lip (you really haven’t been in a car since you were nine and had a mother, at least not for long; you always took trains or buses or _anything,_ why didn’t you ask Carmilla to take the _train_?)

“Laura!” Carmilla hisses, “We’re gonna get caught if you stand there, come _on_ ,” and you steel your fluttering lungs and get in the car.

You make it exactly seventeen minutes before you make Carmilla pull over.

/

It’s not for another thirty-two minutes before your breathing slows to normal. Carmilla unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed into the passenger seat, made sure you were okay with her touching you, whispered apologies into your hair, comforts into the crook of your neck until the need to throw up faded to background noise.

You’re crying, you realize, once Carmilla pulls away, her back up against the glove compartment, her hands still in yours.

“I’m so sorry, Laura,” she says, “I didn’t think, I wasn’t thinking, oh god Laura,” and she runs her thumb over the back of your hand. You lean forward and bury your face in her neck, surround yourself with _Carmilla_ and nothing of the car around you.

“It’s not your fault,” you mumble, “it’s mine, I shouldn’t have –” but she’s shaking her head above you.

“Darling, it’s _never_ your fault,” and there’s something fierce in her voice, your whole body is exhausted and (the divinity you were graced with did nothing to fix the terror that courses through your veins).

You think you fall asleep, because when you look back up, the clock in the dashboard says 10:52 and Carmilla’s managed to put your hair into three braids. She’s got her phone in her hand and you can tell she’s looking up train schedules.

“There’s a train to Calais that leaves a station that’s a ten minute drive from here every two hours or so. That gives us plenty of time to walk, if you want to,” and you notice how her jaw clenches when she says train.

You think train, you think coffin (you think closed, dark) and you want to cry.

“Are you… Carm are you okay with trains?”

She closes her eyes and breathes out slowly, “You give me the window seat, Laur, I’ll be okay,” and she gives you a half-smile, quiet, sad.

You brush her hair back from her face and kiss her gently, “I would chose you a thousand times over,” you whisper into her mouth, and you feel her smile. Her hands hold onto your waist and she drops her lips down to your neck, kisses _me too, me too, me too_ into your skin (ichor doesn’t let you bruise, but _god_ you if you could be marked by her.)

“We’re quite the pair, huh,” you say, “gonna be a nightmare for travel agents everywhere.”

She laughs (you will live thousands of years and never tire of her laugh), “Yeah, but imagine all the bike repair shops that will tell myths of us. We’re gonna keep them in business, the two of us.”

/

You end up walking to the train station, Carmilla ditching the car by the side of the road with a note that says “Sorry! Thought this was my car!” which is quite possibly the least believable thing ever. She insists on carrying your suitcase, because “Cutie, I’m the one with super strength, let me feel _useful_ ,” so you insist on paying for the train tickets.

It’s only fair.

You buy your tickets with forty minutes to go, and struggle to read Carmilla’s ridiculously complicated philosophy book (“Some light reading, cutie”) on a bench in a train station in the middle of nowhere, Austria for thirty-one of those forty minutes, only getting on the train when it’s quite obvious that there’s a definite chance that you may actually miss the train that you just spent 150 euros on tickets for.

Carmilla tugs her knees to her chest as soon as she sits down, presses her forehead against the window (her knuckles are white where she’s grasping the armrest of the seat, one finger tapping, tapping, tapping against armrest, nervous, tense.)

You lean over to whisper something to her, but there’s a voice behind you, “Puis-je m'asseoir ici?” and you turn to see a girl, maybe seven or eight years old, with a school backpack and thick black braids. You glance quickly at Carmilla, cause you took maybe four years of French in elementary school (back when you lived in Canada, before your dad moved you an ocean away from your friends, your dog, your mother barely cold in the ground) and Carmilla probably speaks French as easily as she does English.

Her death grip on the seat has eased a little (the desperation in her eyes fades) and she gives the girl a crooked smile, “Ouais,” and the girl bounces a little as she sits (her feet don’t quite touch the ground.)

“Je m’appelle Fatima,” and she looks expectantly at you, smiling happily.

“Oh. Um… Laura. And she’s Carmilla.”

Carmilla rolls her eyes at you (a little forced, a little trembling, but more wonderfully than you could have ever prayed for), “Elle ne parle pas français,” she leans over you and whispers to Fatima, as if she’s sharing a secret, “elle est canadienne,” and Fatima nods knowingly.

And _yeah,_ you don’t speak French, but you’re like 110% sure you know what Carmilla just said. Fatima looks at you and pats your hand (it’s so grown up you want to laugh, because she’s all of seven years old and fucking _tiny_ ).

“It’s good, Laura,” she says, “I learn English from school. Not everyone can speak French,” and Carmilla bites her lip _hard_ to keep from laughing.

/

You fall asleep somewhere in Germany, and when you wake up, it’s sometime in the night, Fatima’s gone and Carmilla’s got her forehead pressed up against the window again.

“Where’d your little friend go?” You ask, and Carmilla turns slightly and smiles (real smile, not that stupid, sexy smirk she tries to give you most of the time).

“She got off two stops ago—she was visiting her aunt for the week back in Styria.”

Carmilla gives one last glance to the dark landscape out the window and turns to face you fully, eyes worried.

“Babe, have you—have you considered what you’re going to tell your dad?”

Your hands freeze up and you feel the familiar fluttering in your stomach (the starting of the press of hundreds of years on your ribs, between the discs of your spine); Carmilla reaches for your hand and holds it softly.

“No,” you whisper. “No,” and Carmilla kisses the back of your hand (her lips are warm; her eyes lashes long and she’s so damn _pretty_ ).

 _Dad,_ you think, _Dad, I love her so much. I would die for her; she died for me. Dad, I look at her, and I feel whole for the first time._

“Laura? You still here?”

She looks exhausted, mostly (you know that she would give anything to get the fuck off the train), and you realize she probably hasn’t eaten since that morning (her bag is somewhere in the rack above your head, plus drinking blood is a sure fire way to get a mob going), so you lean over and kiss her gently on the cheek (Carmilla’s never one for public displays of affection).

“Always,” you whisper, and she curls her fingers tighter around yours.

/

The train screeches to a halt in Calais and Carmilla almost trips over her feet in her haste to get off it. You don’t mention it; she gives you a half-grin and swings her bag onto her back, tips her face up to the early morning light and takes a shaky breath.

“We have to get to a ferry,” she says, eyes still shut, face still in the sunlight (you wait for her to shake her head slightly and blink, focus back down at you before responding).

“Do you, oh great and mighty Carmilla, happen to know where this ferry is?”

“The docks,” and she grabs your bag from her hand and starts walking determinedly away from the train platform.

You have absolutely no idea where you’re going, so you follow her.

(As it turns out, Carmilla doesn’t know either. She ends up having to ask at least three people for directions because “Calais has _changed_ since 1803 Laura, stop _laughing_ ”).

/

The ferry ride is fast; Carmilla poured a bag of blood into a soda cup in the bathroom and drank it down quickly, making a face at you the entire time.

“It tastes like plastic, and it’s lukewarm,” she grumbles, and you laugh (she sounds like a petulant child and she sticks her tongue out at you).

“Maybe you should have drunk it earlier,” and she just makes a low whining noise in response and lies down with her head on your lap and shuts her eyes, her eye lashes long and soft on her cheekbones.

“Carm. Carm. Carm.” She finally cracks one eye open and flips you off, trying to bury her face further in your thigh.

“Carm, you literally had a sixteen hour train ride to sleep,” and you think she mutters something like “Still fucking nocturnal, sweetheart,” but she’s also mostly asleep so you’re not entirely sure.

/

Once the ferry docks (and you’ve woken Carmilla up which takes at least ten minutes), you realize that you’re in Dover, which is most _definitely_ not the right town. You could probably take a train, but Carmilla looks like she’s about to drop dead and you really can’t do that to her again, so it means you’re going to be choosing the five-hour bus ride.

It gives you time to rehearse the _Dad, I’m immortal_ speech, the _Dad, I’m dating a vampire; Dad, I think I’m in love; Dad, I wish you had my forever too_.

“Laur, did you call your dad to let him know you were coming?”

It gives you time to call your dad. Oops.

Carmilla falls asleep again on the bus, her head slumped at an angle that would hurt in a few hours if she were anyone but herself; you chew on the end of a pen and draft out speech after speech (everything comes out sounding stuttered; blank, _Daddy, I’m never going to die_ ).

_Dad, I know what happens when the person you love dies, god I love her so much. I love her more than I need the finite limitations of mortality, Dad please say you understand._

You realize, somewhere between Eastbourne and Brighton, that you’re crying. Carmilla shifts next to you and kisses your shoulder; doesn’t say anything, presses herself closer to you.

(The five minute walk from the bus stop to your house feels like a dream; Carmilla’s cool hand anchors you to the shimmering pavement.)

/

She rings the doorbell.

Your throat is dry and ( _I love her, Dad, I love her_ ) you can hear his steps as he comes to open the door.

“I can’t do it, Carm,” and she squeezes your hand, hard.

“Yeah. Yeah you can,” and your dad opens the door as she’s kissing the side of your jaw.

“Dad!” you squeak, and he gathers you into a hug, taking your bags from Carmilla in the same movement.

After he’s done making sure you’re okay, that you didn’t drown in the channel, or get eaten by bears or something, he looks over Carmilla carefully.

“You must be Carmilla then,” and she _salutes_ him lazily, and tries to take her bags back, “Nice to finally meet you in person, Carmilla,” and hugs her tight. She looks surprised and after a second, gingerly hugs him back.

“You too, Mr. Hollis,” and he shakes his head at her.

“Charlie, please.”

Carmilla smiles.

/

You don’t tell him the first night.

Or the second night, for that matter.

(Carmilla sleeps in your bedroom; your dad gives you a hard look and makes sure you understand that if he hears _anything_ , young lady, she’s being moved to the guest bedroom.)

(You can, if necessary, be very quiet; letting your girlfriend fuck you in your childhood bedroom is something thrilling, something slightly tilting and laughing into her hand on your mouth).

You slip back into some sort of routine, show Carmilla all the spots you learned to love after moving to Hove when you were ten years old (the park down the road from your house, your school, the café where you would go on dates with your old girlfriends) but the days slip past and school starts up in just a few days (and the magic pricking in the back of your head still hasn’t found words in your mouth).

It’s not until the morning of the third day when you wake up and Carmilla’s sitting at your desk, paging through one of your old books and she smiles at you like she’s been doing this for years that the words are there.

They were always there; they were.

You drag Carmilla down the stairs (she’s still in pajama pants and a tank top; you’re wearing a t-shirt from a concert you went to when you were 16 and a pair of Carmilla’s shorts) and find your dad sitting at the kitchen table, drinking his morning coffee.

“Dad, I have something I need to tell you.”

He looks up at you, and puts his mug down. “You’re not pregnant, are you Laura?”

You’re kind of struck silent and look at Carmilla for a second and back at your dad. “Um. No?”

“Good, good.” He picks his mug back up and takes another sip of his coffee. “And you, Carmilla? You’re not pregnant?”

Carmilla shakes her head. “No, sir.”

He nods once and sits back in his chair. “Okay girls. Hit me with it.”

You take a great shuddering breath; let the ichor in your veins settle in your stomach, in your spine (you are made of stars; of gods, you are something _more,_ you were quite truly _always_ something more.)

“I may have—done something,” and Carmilla rolls her eyes because _dear god Laura, what a way to start_.

“I assumed that, pumpkin. If you don’t want to tell me what you did, you don’t have to,” and he reaches out to hold your hand, “but remember, honey, I’ll love you no matter what.”

“I love Carmilla,” you start, and you feel Carmilla duck her head next to you, “I love her so much, Dad, and she’s… she’s…”

“A vampire,” Carmilla says, and she’s looking straight at your dad, “but like, not a ‘I vant to suck your blood’ type. I mean, like I _do_ , but I don’t prey on people. Not anymore,” and your dad nods.

(There was a family of nymphs that lived down the street when you lived in Vancouver, and there was a selkie in your grade 9 class, so the supernatural thing isn’t _new_ to him, but still: he’s taking this surprisingly well.)

“And Dad, I… I found a way to be with her, and I know it’s not normal or probably what you dreamed of for your little girl or anything but Dad: I’m not going to die,” and you can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“Oh, Laura,” he breathes, and you can taste nectar on your lips.

Carmilla’s fingers scrabble for yours and you dig your nails into her palm; breathe twice. The silence is ringing in your ears (this is your father, your whole goddamn family and you cannot read his face).

“Laura, darling, why didn’t you _tell_ me?” and he’s pulling your shoulders into a hug (you think he’s crying; you know you’re crying).

“Was it safe?” He asks, and Carmilla digs her nails into the back of your hand from where she’s still standing (she still won’t tell you what she saw that afternoon; she wakes up screaming some nights and you know she’s remembering those minutes, hours of your burning).

“Yeah,” you lie, “Yeah.”

/

(Your father dies on a Thursday afternoon).

He’s buried back in Canada, between the graves of his wife and only daughter (both died too young). You attend as a faceless mourner, and sob on Carmilla’s shoulder.

In between now and then, you forget the exact color of his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> i've never watched bambi. my friend told me what to say


End file.
